Sampling bias and the robustness of ecological metrics for plant–damage-type association networks: Comment

Abstract

AbstractBipartite network metrics, which link taxa at two trophic levels, are notoriously biased when sampling is incomplete or uneven (Blüthgen et al., 2008; Dormann and Blüthgen, 2017; Fründ et al., 2016). Yet a new contribution (Swain et al., 2023, henceforth SEA) claims the opposite: that bipartite network metrics are minimally sensitive to incomplete sampling and, in fact, perform better at low sample sizes than traditional richness metrics. Here I show that SEA achieved this extraordinary finding by abandoning accepted practices, including practices from the authors’ previous papers.